I was asked to be a contributor for Wedding Business Magazine. You’ll want to subscribe because I’ll be chiming in on best business practices. The magazine is a treasure trove of resources and smart insights.

In February’s issue I’m sharing thoughts on how to avoid burnout. It’s all about being smart with how you organize your business. Now is a great time to put those systems into place before the busy-ness of busy season gets to all of us.

I’ve invited Reytheda Jackson, owner of Stohree Events to share the lessons she learned from Christie Lindor on Closing the Strategic Mentorship Gap at Be Sage Conference. This was Rey’s first time at Be Sage Conference and I loved getting to know her. She has great vision for her business, and I can’t wait to see her do BIG things!

When I saw that this topic was going to be a part of the Be Sage conference I was very excited! This is something that I have struggled with as an entrepreneur and wedding professional. How exactly to create those mentorship relationships that can guide me and push my business to the next level?

As a part of her presentation, Christie Lindor explained the levels of mentors. I didn’t realize that there were different types of mentors. First, you might have a coach who is some that you pay to guide you and give advice. The next level is an actual mentor… typically this is a person or a friend that is more experienced than you in your chosen career and finally a sponsor. Last, a sponsor is someone who sees your potential would like to invest in your development and growth. They are typically more connected and successful than your mentor and are able to provide you with opportunities that you may not have access to.

Now for the hard part, which is locating these individuals and creating those relationships. Christie suggests looking up a local Lean In group. I had no idea that they existed in my area, but when I returned home I found a few and plan on attending them to see if they are a fit.

Another suggestion is reaching out directly by using the Jab, Jab Hook approach. This describes an approach where you offer your preferred mentor something of value and then you make your ask for their assistance or knowledge. Acquiring a mentor can be a daunting task but Christine made it seem very easy and attainable and I look forward to following her guidance and securing a mentor and maybe also a sponsor of my own this year!

I had the chance to talk with Christina Farrow, founder of Aisle Planner, a few weeks ago about her past life as a wedding planner and the lessons she learned from selling a wedding business. After doing so, she got the idea to launch a project management tool for wedding planners, which eventually led to Aisle Planner. Here’s a little bit more about her journey.

Michelle: In 2013, there were a few other planning tools being marketed to wedding planners. But – Aisle Planner definitely brought a superior product to the table.

What led you to launch Aisle Planner in 2013?

Christina: As a small business owner with a thriving [wedding planning] business, even with all my experience and a road map for success, I quickly found myself increasingly overwhelmed with all that needed to be done. I had tried every possible solution over the years to streamline my planning and design process, and it frustrated me to no end knowing that even the best offline AND online planning tools on the market were not supporting my desire to be more, do more and live a more balanced life. What started as a simple desire to make my own planning process easier and more enjoyable became a full-blown obsession to help small business owners in the wedding industry who all seemed to share the same sentiment. That’s where the idea of Aisle Planner was born.

This was when technology hardly existed for the small business owner. What was that like?

I look back and realize how far technology has come in such a short time. While today’s technology didn’t exist back then, there were still plenty of great tools that helped my team and I get our work done. We built a solid business with those tools and created our own processes and our own systems with them. We had perfectly organized binders filled with custom worksheets and questionnaires I created using Microsoft Word. We had folders for every client on our computers. We created custom Microsoft Excel workbooks embedded with far too complicated formulas that helped us create and manage everything from the budget to a timeline.

We used these same programs to create and send contracts and invoices, and track prospective new clients. We had saved client emails that we kept in folders in our email program to use as templates that we would copy and paste into new emails to help us save time. We would pencil sketch our layouts on paper and beg our rental companies to recreate them using their CAD programs. We would wait for days – sometimes a week or longer for them to turn it around – only to find that our designs wouldn’t fit in the space we had to work with – forcing us to start the layout design process all over again.

Looking back, I realize how inefficient this cobbled-together process was but, at the time, it not only worked but worked REALLY WELL and I felt completely organized. In fact, vendors and brides would compliment me on how organized I was! When you don’t know there’s a better way (and your way is working just fine), it’s easy to feel complacent in your process of getting the job done.

What are you most proud of with Aisle Planner?

It hasn’t been an easy road, especially coming from a non-technical background but the support of our pros has been incredible. I can’t help but be inspired by our customers and the small business owners in the events industry who are faced with the same, very real challenges I was facing. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t share with me how Aisle Planner has impacted their business for the better. It makes me so proud to know that the online tools my team and I are working to build will empower them to make things happen for their businesses so they can ultimately focus on what matters most in their lives.

What is the future of Aisle Planner? Can you share about any updates we might be able to look forward to? {wink wink}

While we launched Aisle Planner with just planning and project management tools to help pros manage each event or project after it was booked, it was just as important for us to be able to support our professional community with tools that helped them get those events booked in the first place.

That said, we centered the last year around adding features that would seamlessly link powerful marketing tools – our business listings and publishing platform – and client management features including lead tracking, online proposals, contracts, invoices and online payment features to our cornerstone planning and project management tools. We rounded out the year with the addition of one of the most in-demand features since our inception, Layout Design and Seating. With many new additions to our platform like these, you’re finally catching a glimpse of the full ecosystem we had envisioned from the start.

The coming year will bring many new things. We’re excited to reveal the brand re-fresh we’ve been working on behind the scenes to better reflect who we are as a company. We’re looking forward to welcoming fresh new faces to Team AP to better support our growing global community. And, we’re even more excited for all that we planned in the way of new features and enhancements that better connect all of our tools, fill the gaps and further support our mission to empower any event pro (not just wedding planners!) to create positive change for their business.

I had the pleasure of learning from Christie Osborne of Mountianside Media at Be Sage Conference. She walked us through how we should be utilizing google analytics to make better marketing decisions.

These are the 3 most important things I learned from Christie:

The Data Alone Can’t Tell the Story

Goals are Set by Analyzing Data

How to tie sales goals to google analytics

Using Google Data

When we are faced with a bunch of stats and data we don’t always know where to begin. This is when we need to put on our analyst hat and try to read the story before us. What is the google analytics data telling us about our website traffic? Where are people coming from? How are they working their way thru our website? Figuring out the story of our site is the first step in understanding google analytics.

Setting Website Traffic Goals

In analyzing our history, we can begin to set goals for the future. By using google analytics we can make decisions on what we want our sites to do in the future.

For example, in an ideal scenario we want to steer everyone to our contact page and see that page as the exit point. If we see that people are exiting our site most often on our about page, we may need to add a call to action that points them to the contact page. Or… it could be our about page is too long or too boring. Or… it is too general. We have to make some assumptions and we can begin to test some changes so that we can achieve this goal: get people to the contact page.

Quantify Goals & Expected Results

Christie showed us how we can set approximate estimates for our conversion rate. This was very eye opening to me. Here’s what she showed us:

Let’s say that in March ten people completed our contact form. We know that from looking at google analytics and because we received the form notices. And let’s say that of those people three of them booked at a value of $30k total (for an average dollar value of $10k).

You can set up google analytics goals with this value of $10k which shows that each conversion has a value of $10k. This is approximate (as we don’t have shopping carts to completely link the value of each sale). But, it gives us a great start at placing a dollar value with our website traffic.

I came to Michelle because I had a vision for my company’s future but I needed someone with a calculator to hold my hand. Michelle is the consummate professional- she takes the time to understand your brand and overall goals, then patiently walks you through the process of understanding how the numbers play into it all. She’s the perfect balance between cheering you on and making sure you don’t spend too much on overpriced airport bottled water. I wouldn’t be where I am now without her.

Meghan Ely – OFD Consulting

Hiring Sage Wedding Pros was the best decision I’ve ever made for my company. Michelle helped me see where my money was going, how to streamline to make more profit, and created the most amazing cash flow spreadsheet I’ve ever seen. She is always fast to reply to my emails and has the best advice for my business challenges. Working with Sage Wedding Pros has taught me how to run a business that is profitable, debt-free, and smarter. She is honest, doesn’t sugar coat things, and is one of the smartest women in the wedding industry.